In your own studies (on your own, or for a class) did you have an "ah ha" moment when you finally, really understood pointers? Do you have an explanation you use for beginner programmers that seems ...

I have seen several implementations of "State Machines" on github. As far as I understand, a state machine takes input that may or may not transform its state into one of a finite set of other states. ...

Let's say a table with two columns has 100 quadrillion records. And I want to find a record that has column #2 equal something.
If column #2 is indexed it returns the result immediately, but if it's ...

I'm new at computer science and programming, and I was wondering, is there a difference between computer science and programming? and do you get to choose to study only one of them at the university, ...

For decades, the accepted degree to get to become a software developer was "Compter Science."
We've had a few questions already about whether that degree really prepares students to develop software.
...

Is there a way to make sure that modifications to free software are released even when no binaries of modified code are conveyed? Though it may sound odd and from what I understand, e.g., GPL requires ...

We can find all the prime factors using a Sieve of Erastothenes. But how do we find ALL the factors of a number?
For instance, 24 = 2x2x2x3
But the complete factor list is - 1,2,3,4,6,8,12,24.
I am ...

I have the following problem to solve:
Given a ferry with length d and a list of n cars conataining their length we must load the cars on the ferry in an order in which they appear in the list on 2 ...

What are good programming competitions (or web design competitions) available for highschool students in the Northeast (I am looking for a pretty long/comprehensive list)- of the USA? The competitions ...

My computer science teacher says Big O has an upper bound but no lower bound. When I look at a graph of an algorithm mapped out using BigO though, there isn't an upper bound at all. The upper limit ...

I have what I would call a philosophical question about λ-calculus.
When you explore λ-calculus you will be surprised to see all the things that you can do there. You can define integers, arithmetic ...

I am reading an analysis on dynamic arrays (from the Skiena's algorithm manual).
I.e. when we have an array structure and each time we are out of space we allocate a new array of double the size of ...

I often hear that a real programmer can easily learn any language within a week. Languages are just tools for getting things done, I'm told. Programming is the ultimate skill that must be learned and ...

Moore's law is an empirical law and in simple terms states that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years.
One of the consequences of Moore's law is that ...

What would be the technical term for a tree that grows in both the directions, starting from the root in the middle?
The central idea being that new elements can be added to the tree (Now, I am not ...

I've already been programming for quite some time and have a firm grasp on programming itself, OOP, and a few other programming related things. However, I'm interested in learning the same things that ...

I understand that a software engineers job is to work with all aspects of developing and supporting a software system. How does a project manager fit/work with a software engineer in a small team (5 ...

I am trying to better understand what would be required for a compiler to be able to make intelligent choices regarding concurrency on behalf of the programmer. I realize that there are many difficult ...

I was taking this course - CMU 18-447, Computer Architecture at Carnegie Mellon to brush my knowledge and concepts.
They say that most of the machine level details and implementations is taken care ...

Take from wikipedia, aliasing is defined as accessing a data location through different names.
Also taken from wikipedia, indirection is defined as referencing something "using a name, reference, or ...

I'm a computer engineer and all the courses we have had about programming and computer languages were an introduction to C/Java and OOP. Now I feel like reading Java language specification to learn a ...

It seems like a lot of university-level computer science programs and programmer job interviews focus heavily on algorithms and data structures. I'm curious as to why universities and employers put so ...